Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink

Owned by MillerCoors brewing company and introduced nationally in 1986, MGD is counterintuitively a bottled beer. Since it is not heat pasteurized — the process most bottled beers undergo — the brand is marketed as “the fresh taste of draft beer in a bottle.” Between 2007 and 2012, Miller Genuine Draft sales fell by more than 1.7 million barrels, the fourth largest decline out of all high-selling non-craft beer brands. U.S. market share fell from 1.5% to 0.7% in that time.

Milwaukee’s Best was first brewed in 1895 by the Gettelman Brewing Company. In 1961, the small brewery was acquired by Miller, which introduced Milwaukee’s Best nationally in 1984. MillerCoors has marketed the brand as affordable beer “brewed for a man’s taste.” No MillerCoors brand suffered more than Milwaukee’s Best between 2007 and 2012. Over that time, annual sales fell by 915,000 barrels. According to Shepard, over the past few years, sub-premium brewers raised their prices slightly in hopes of getting drinkers to switch to higher levels of beer. Competition for Milwaukee’s Best drinkers became more fierce as a result. Shepard added that before this happened, the brand had already been “fading anyway.”

Bud Select was introduced in 2005. The beer has slightly fewer calories than Bud Lite, which has 110 calories, and is marketed as a “light beer for people who love beer.” The brand has not sold well since its introduction, with a 1 million barrel decline in sales between 2007 and 2012, or about 62%. According to Shepard, “Budweiser tried a lot of different things to fix the ‘Bud’ brand. Bud Select was one of them. It didn’t work.”

The Michelob Light franchise “is a sinking brand at this point. There’s still a bunch of Michelobs, and Ultra is growing,” Shepard said. But the Michelob brand as a whole, he explained, “appears to be a sinking ship.” Introduced in 1978 by Anheuser Busch and styled after a European lager, Michelob Light has struggled recently more than any other top beer brand. Shipments declined by nearly 70% between 2007 and 2012, falling from more than 1,000,000 barrels to just 350,000.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, Anheuser-Busch Inbev S.A./N.V. was identified as the brewer of Labatt Blue. In 2007, InBev owned the Labatt Blue brand, which it sold in the U.S. and was brewed by Labatt brewery in Canada. In 2012, Labatt Blue in the U.S. was owned by North American Breweries and brewed by Molson Coors in Canada.